1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital recorder capable of digitally recording, reproducing or editing a digital signal such as a digital audio signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as a method of recording, reproducing and editing an audio signal, an analog audio signal is recorded on a magnetic tape, and the recorded signal is reproduced or edited. Since this prior art involves analog recording/reproduction, deterioration of the sound quality is inevitable. Particularly, the deterioration will be prominent when the once-recorded audio signal is dubbed.
Further, the use of the magnetic tape as a recording medium raises problems such that it takes time to reach the target editing point, and editing requires that the target recorded portion of the magnetic tape be physically cut and pasted or be copied to somewhere else before actually executing the editing.
The problem about the deterioration of the sound quality can be overcome by employing a method of digitally recording data on a magnetic tape. However, there still remains a shortcoming concerning the freedom of locating the starting point or editing due to the use of a sequential-access type recording medium, and this problem cannot be overcome by simple digitization of data.
There has been proposed a solution to the conventional problems which uses a hard disk or a photoelectromagnetic disk as a recording medium. (Refer to, for example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/690,710 filed on Apr. 24, 1991, now abandoned, (Inventor: Nobuo Iizuka) and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/752,876 filed on Aug. 30, 1991, now pending (Inventor: Atsushi Miyake).
In reproducing audio signals from multiple tracks of a disk, when editing is frequently performed, the number of times the disk access points become discontinuous increases, resulting in longer disk access time.